Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Behind the intriguing town of Gilmore resides the campground
of Meadow Lake. I had first heard about this from Cal-Ranch's website as one of
the best kept secrets for this area. Judging from the amount of traffic it has
through there the secret is out. Meadow Lake is basically a bowl formed on all
sides by massive mountains. The snow and runoff water goes into the middle of
this bowl to form Meadow Lake. The lake is then stocked by our f(r)iends from
fish and game from time to time. Plenty of hiking trails to take through the
draws of the mountain and for the more adventurous folk, mountain climbing as
well.

My only complaint about the whole adventure is that the
camping sites were built too closely to another. Which, if you have decent
neighbors is not an issue, but it our case it was a big issue. Camping in Idaho
for a number of years lends a certain respect of the wilderness and its
inhabitants. Bears are a major concern for our area, as well as any wildlife
creature and with bear signs posted everywhere it reminds you; you are the intruder. So here is my example of how not to camp:

These people have left all their food out in the open;
campfire is still burning and they spent the whole day at lake with no one at
their site. They left this fire going since 12:00 am at night when they were
chopping wood with an axe. My wife had quite enough of the wood cutting in the
am and yelled at their general direction to stop (or something similiar). They then proceeded to let
their children run wild through the whole campsite during the day without supervision. Despite this we managed to
have a good time, despite any lack of camp etiquette on our neighbor’s behalf.

Monday, July 23, 2012

This was a camping weekend for us as a family and seeing how I have never been to a good ol' fashioned ghost town I decided to change that. The story of Gilmore can be read here and they do justice to the story of Gilmore.
Here are some of the pictures I was able to take out hiking.

You can see the rest of my album here﻿ as I am getting errors for trying to upload to many pictures.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Migraine headache last night so I am working on about two hours of sleep right now.

Since we are now stuck with Romney, one has to wonder why he is not coming down on the Obama campaign harder than he is now. Clearly it is not for lack of his abysmal performance in the White House. ~PSA time~; I have some advice for those who are considering a career in politics. If someone slams you in an advert and it is not true, please, please do not demand an apology for it. It makes you look childish and ineffectual as a candidate.

I have been thinking about SHTF events and honestly they all scare me. More to the point, the aftermath scenario is going to be a lot worse than what most people think. The short range disasters are not the issue I am talking about any event that would last three or more years. If you live in/near any major population center and cannot move in the first month or so survival is close to impossible for you. Disregard gangs, cannibals, and wild animals from the zoos that are running wild, the diseases are what are going to kill most people. Typhoid, Cholera, Rabies (animals are hungry), Dysentery, Giardiasis, Hepatitis, Plague, Tuberculosis and a few more that I am forgetting.

Of the 311,800,000 people that inhabit the US how many are actually prepared past the event horizon of a black swan event? A million, maybe, so that leaves a population which has not been able to take care itself for at least 70 years or more. Farming will most likely come to a halt as the supplies of fuel are run out. Judging from how most people use their vehicles, they will not have a chance to escape because keeping their vehicle topped off is not a concern for them.

People in rural areas are not immune to this either. Some diseases will make it out to the country side whether it is from a person or an animal. I was reading an article on states that allow exotic animals. Only 13 of them ban people from having exotic animals and seven states only have a partial ban. According to one website the number of large cats possessed by private individuals number in the 7,000 range. Those are just the cats people; now imagine how many bear and wolves are out there.

How many of us have the adequate medical knowledge to treat these diseases and have the medications on had to deal with them? What about the large game that is now tracking you as you travel across the countryside to your bug out locale? Did you pack a large rifle with you to travel with?
This is what has been occupying my thoughts of late.

Sorry for the disjointedness, my lack of sleep is catching up with me.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

So I am back from my prolonged absence and none to soon if you ask me. I took a few personal trips this summer and I am glad to be back. One of the trips was to help my Mom get prepped for her exodus from Kaliforniastan. In my travels I have never seen a more backwards state in my entire life.
For instance; To get rid of a feral cat in Southern California you have to trap it and then wait on hold for 30 minutes to schedule a pick up which may or may not show up in 3 hours. Thats right folks, you have to catch your own animals which means that Cali is paying its animal control sixteen per hour to drive around and make pick ups only.

To make matters worse one of her neighbors called the Department of Health for the mess the feral cats made. So here I am trying to trap the cats, animal control is useless, and a very unfriendly neighbor is waging war with my mother. I will be so happy when she moves out of out there and is back in the U.S. proper.

It's weird that after I lost my job that all these other issues cropped up. Had I been employed I would be unable to devote much time to deal with them. I am not usually to preachy, but, God does have a plan for all of us and it is humbling to see it in action.

Speaking about plans; I plan to reduce the amount of posts from three times a week down to one. I have a number of family obligations coming up and that will keep me busy for most of the summer. I know I have a reloading article that I need to make good on and I have some thoughts on SHTF bunkering that might fly in the face of what others have preached as gospel.

Yes I am back but I might be busy here and there. I expect that in the coming months that it will be a busy time for most of the prepping community as well.